Business & UN
Charter of Good Practice on the Role of the Private Sector in Economic Integration of Refugees
Co-sponsored by the World Bank, the Confederation of Danish Industry, the European Investment Bank and the International Chamber of Commerce, the Charter of Good Practice on the Role of the Private Sector in Economic Integration of Refugees offers guidelines on how the private sector can facilitate refugee integration into host community economies. It supports policy-makers and practitioners in enabling the private sector to play a stronger role in the Economic Integration of Refugees.
Today, 70 million people have been forced from their homes worldwide, including 25 million refugees, according to UNHCR. The topic of empowering refugees as economic actors is thus of crucial global importance and the Charter of Good Practice on the Role of the Private Sector in Economic Integration of Refugees – co-sponsored by the World Bank, the Confederation of Danish Industry, European Investment Bank and International Chamber of Commerce – represents a push for global standards that could be applied in a systemic manner by public and private sectors alike.
The Charter offers guidelines on how the private sector can facilitate refugee integration into host community economies, and how policy-makers and practitioners can enable the private sector to play a stronger role in the Economic Integration of Refugees. The charter is divided in four sections and offers five principles for each:
- Entrepreneurship
- Investment
- Employment
- Services and Products
The Charter was elaborated collaboratively during the June 2019 Paris Conference by hundreds of practitioners from many companies and institutions, under the co-sponsorship of the World Bank Group, the European Investment Bank and the Confederation of Danish Industry, in partnership with ICC, the UN High Commission for Refugees and the World Economic Forum.
The Charter’s principles are meant to be adopted and applied within private sector businesses, public institutions or development projects – making use of global standards that emanate from practitioners and experts within the field. The sponsors and partners will be working together to operationalize these principles, by exploring how to institutionalize them in strategic documents and through identification of relevant projects where these can be tested.
